Satya - Truthfulness

For the last 15 years, I've been trying to teach high school English. For the last 15 years, I've failed and remained in 8th grade. I've been passed over for 7 positions in my own district alone. I've been teaching a scripted curriculum that requires zero thought or skill from the teacher. I'm bored and I'm trapped, and I've been repeatedly snubbed by the head of my department, in a way that is both humiliating and deeply troubling.

This year, I decided, no more. I changed my passwords to "ThisIsMyLastYear!" (they've since changed). Beginning in September, I created charts of any district in the area where I could reasonably go without taking an even bigger pay cut than I did last time around. Then I circled the only one that was feasible to me: Pattonville. It's the #1 most diverse district in Missouri. It's 13 minutes from my house. They posted 3 high school openings this spring. I know two of the principals in the district (although not at the school). 

And -- importantly -- it would be a $15,000 a year raise, which would mean I no longer have to work in a filthy warehouse after school just so I can afford to be a teacher. I would get to actually focus on teaching.

I didn't get it.

Correction: I didn't get any of the 3 openings. I have literally 10 years of college education. I spent hours preparing. I bought clothes in the school colors, on a principal's recommendation. I took at least 12 pages of notes. I talked to everyone I knew in the district to get references and tips. I had recommendation letters from 4 different principals and assistant principals. I printed out the state Grade Level Expectations for English and highlighted every place the 8th grade standards deviated from the 9th-10th standards so I knew exactly what I was talking about during my interview. I sent handwritten notes following up.

They had THREE openings, I knew two of the principals, and I still failed.

One of the principals who recommended me for the position said, "Well, everything happens for a reason!"

Some friends say, "It just wasn't part of God's plan!"

And I say fkkk that noise. You start working 13-hour days in a warehouse just so you can afford to keep your real job; then be forced to read lessons from a script to “stay in line” with everyone else; you spend 15 years trying to convince someone to hire you for a position you're grossly overqualified for. You try setting up payment plans for nearly every major purchase you make because your savings account is almost non-existent now.

Then get back to me on "God's plan."

I work in one of the lowest-paid districts in one of the lowest-paid states in one of the lowest-paid professions in the country. I had an opportunity -- three opportunities -- to actually teach and to get paid to teach! And I still wasn't good enough.

There are people who have suffered far worse, and I don't mean to undermine their loss or pain. But I am also desperate and defeated.

In Kate Chopin’s masterpiece, The Awakening, Edna Pontellier feels so trapped by her life that one day she walks straight out into the Gulf of Mexico and lets it swallow her whole. When I first read the book, I remember a lot of people expressing outrage that a mother would abandon her young children like that. But they didn’t get it at all. 

Edna Pontellier was a woman for whom society had carved a very narrow path. She finally got to the point where she knew she couldn't live within the confines of her own small life. She refused to.

Similarly, there’s a motif in the show Suits where Harvey asks Mike, “What do you do when someone puts a gun to your head?” Like Edna’s peers, Mike assumes that there really isn’t a choice: you do whatever the gunman says! Or in the case of most late 19th century ladies, you live a demure New Orleans life and raise your children because that’s what one does.

Edna and Harvey believed that there are other, invisible options: In Suits, “You take the gun; or you pull out a bigger one; or you call their bluff. Or one of 146 other things.” In Edna’s case, where your environment gives you no choice, you create a choice for yourself, even if it is letting the ocean swallow you instead of letting your own narrow life swallow you. 

I know in some small part of me that there are other, invisible choices, but like Mike and the ladies in Edna’s circle, I cannot see them. I’ve been trying to teach something different for 15 years now, and all I can see is ocean.